Hi all

So, our first Book Club was pretty decent. Thanks for your participation!

It's now time to choose our book for the next event, which will be in mid-January (probably opening on Monday 18 January 2010, just fyi).

Last time we had submissions it was suggested that we might do an "Other Fiction" book. There'll be a Quick Poll (hopefully tomorrow) to vote on this, but for now please make your submissions with that in mind. We can change that when the results are in, if necessary.

Other Fiction refers to books in all fiction genres apart from Sci-Fi or Fantasy (obvious but true). So it could be Crime, Thriller, Romance, Historical, Classical, a literary Classic, or that somewhat-undefined group of books which includes Ishiguro, McEwan, Niffenegger etc.

The list above is not exhaustive, just intended to give you an idea of where to start.


A reminder of what the Book Club is all about, and what kind of books you should suggest.

1. The whole point is for everyone to read the same book and then discuss it.
2. The community chooses a book based on submissions here. We do this via the Quick Poll.
3. The books you suggest should be easy to get and not too difficult to read (so Proust is probably not an option...).
4. Once the book is chosen we then give you 3 or 4 weeks to source it and read it.
5. Finally, on the date above, Jacob or I will make a post with a few starter questions and perhaps some thoughts and then we have a lovely discussion about anything at all to do with the book.
6. Anyone can ask questions, anyone can join in (provided, of course, that you've read the book or want to), and the more who join, the merrier it will be.


If you have any more questions then post them here, or NB Jacob or myself.

Otherwise, post your submissions here.


And thank you!



EDIT: The New and Cunning Plan

So, my darlings.

The site has voted rather overwhelmingly in favour of a Sci-Fi/Fantasy book for the January Book Club, so that's what we'll do.

However: my feeling is that there are enough people interested so we'll also do an Other Fiction book.

That's right: there'll be two Book Clubs in January. We'll start the SF/F one on 18 January, and the OF (or OL, which do you prefer?) one will start a week later, ie 25 January.

Please make your submissions for both SF/F and OF/L books in this post, and we'll vote on them in a week's time (via Quickpoll), leaving a good month for reading.

Obviously, this is going to take dedication from all of you to make it work, so please join in. It's actually quite a lot of fun, and it should encourage diversity of reading. If it works well we'll also do it for the March Book Club.

Thanks, everyone.